


It's Friday I'm in Love

by TaleWeaver



Series: TGIF [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/pseuds/TaleWeaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of one-shots/drabbles in response to ficprompts/discussion posts on be_compromised livejournal, usually the regular friday discussion/prompt/recs. (which may one day be absorbed into/mined shamelessly for longer fics.)<br/>This is the PG edition; 'Wanna be your Friday night sweet ride' holds the mature & explicit ratings of same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 'Cause Every Girl's Crazy 'bout a Sharp-dressed Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the be_compromised ATTF topic 'trope reversal', and the subsequent comment ficathon. Chapter title from ZZ Top.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: _cliche - Clint hates wearing suits, and when forced into one will never fail to ditch the tie/unbutton the collar ASAP._  
>  (chosen because the way Jeremy Renner works a suit is the only reason this authour watched MI:Ghost Protocol more than once.)

No one ever seems to guess that when it comes to raw visual pleasure, Natasha likes Clint best in a tux.

Natasha appreciates any view of her partner that she can get – naked is an especial favourite – but there’s something about Clint in a tuxedo or even a well-cut suit that particularly trips her switches. She’s been known to drag him into coat closets between mission completion and extraction, or even while undercover when she can get away with it; on one memorable occasion she nailed him in the back seat of a limo so thoroughly that Coulson had to hack the security feed before the driver sold it to a pornographic producer.

It’s possibly for the same reason that Daniel Craig is her favourite James Bond, and has been from the scene in _Casino Royale_ where he looks at himself in the mirror wearing a proper tux, almost-but-not-quite showing surprise that he actually cleans up very nicely.

It’s partly the way it makes Clint’s outside match the inside – her partner is transformed from a plain working sword into an heirloom blade.

It’s also partly because of how much **Clint** likes it – if he must work on the ground instead of literally watching over her, he much prefers doing it while wearing a properly tailored suit. Not many people, even in SHIELD, realise just how well he can wear one. Natasha isn’t sure if Clint himself realises it’s at least partly because Armani is something that the 'circus trash' he’d once been, and so gladly shed like an outgrown skin, could never have dreamed of wearing.

_(so, yeah, it doesn't have an ending... may work it into that MI:ghost protocol fusion Brandt-is-Clint-undercover idea that won't come out enough to give me a damn plotline. Or the one where William Brandt and Natalie Rushman have been dating for over a year.)_  



	2. They just make that stuff for the Tourists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **OR** My partner killed the President of Paraguay with a fork, and all I got was this lousy fridge magnet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the be_compromised Valentine's Day mini-promptathon: _Clint and/or Natasha buying gifts for the other while on different assignments in different countries._ Warnings for possible excessive alliteration and barely-beta'ed.  
>  (takes place in the same 'universe' as _We Wish You a Covert Christmas, and a Clandestine New Year_ )

It started by accident, really. 

On Natasha's first solo mission after getting out of 're-training' (translation: reprogramming to undo the brainwashing and several nasty psych-triggers), she was sent to Berlin. It was a simple recon and intelligence gathering - the sort of thing she could have done in her sleep. She and Clint had already pulled off A-rank missions as a team (including one that had still been a C-rank when they left the helicarrier), but Natasha chose to accept Fury's brusque _'As a solo agent, you're still the newbie, so you get the shit missions. Deal with it, Romanoff'_ , rather than believe that SHIELD were still waiting for her to go rogue after three years in the uniform.

After capably finishing the mission in half the assigned time, Natasha had three days free to do absolutely nothing. So naturally she went shopping.

Later that week, Clint looked at the baseball cap she'd just handed to him, and asked, "What's with the little red guy on the front?"

"He's the stop sign on all the new traffic lights," Natasha told him. "They're making him into a tourist-friendly marketable symbol. I thought you'd like 'stop' better than 'go'." She shrugged and added, "It was either the stop-and-go man or an anthropomorphic representation of the Berlin TV Tower, and that just looked creepy."

"But why did you give this to me?"

"Dr Oatman said that I needed to form closer bonds with my co-workers, in order to build camaraderie."

Two months later, Clint was sent on a solo mission to Haiti, and brought back a Baron Samedi doll (about the same size as Barbie) for Natasha. 

"You gave me a little man, I'm giving you one," he explained.

She hand-sewed a tiny eye patch for it, but neither of them ever, EVER commented on how much it looked like a miniaturised Fury wearing a top hat.

Thus the tradition was born. Whenever one of them went on a solo mission, they would bring back a souvenir for the other. It had to have something to do with the city (or in the case of no city, the country), and it had to be something made for the tourists.

Clint nearly always got Natasha things from amusement parks (adolescent conditioning from the circus, maybe). She had a mug emblazoned with the El Jaguar rollercoaster from Isla Magica (when he’d squashed a spy in Seville), and after Clint humiliated a hitman in Helsinki, he came back with a pair of Pellen Puoti sunglasses from Linnanmäki Amusement Park, that were so tacky that Natasha had to throw back three shots of vodka before placing them on the bookshelves where she displayed Clint’s gifts. She much preferred the cute shark plushie that Clint brought back from Ancol Dreamland in Jakarta, which had even been spotted with blood from the knife fight.

(Clint made a special trip to Cliff’s Amusement Park in Alberquque, to get Natasha a carved and painted wooden snake – meant to represent the New Mexico Rattler rollercoaster. But he kept it in his footlocker in his quarters on base, and it was crushed to splinters when the base went ka-blooey.)

Natasha, on the other hand, liked fridge magnets, as they were small, light, and able to be carried in her pocket (or her cleavage) if she had to make tracks before the scheduled extraction, and sneak past customs with only the clothes on her back. They could also be used to confuse the occasional second-rate metal detector to get her gun into the airport.

Clint's ancient fridge in his Bed-Stuy apartment gradually sprouted a miniature submarine (from the Submarine Vesikko museum, when Natasha went to Helsinki herself), a plastic moulded snow-covered mountain (when Natasha’s cover was a cat-burglar in Chamonix) but his favourite was the small plastic tiara with the flimsy ribbon ‘Miss Paraguay’ sash across it, that Natasha had carefully glued a magnet to the back of, since the beauty pageant didn’t issue souvenirs. On the rare occasion Clint had to explain it to someone, he always, ALWAYS mentioned that despite missing the question and answer round to kill the President of Paraguay (with a fork, as it turned out), Natasha had still managed to come in third. 

Eventually, they started bringing back discreetly blank postcards for Coulson from their partnered missions, which he kept in his locker next to his Captain America trading cards. The one from Eerie, Indiana is stained green from the mysterious slime, but Coulson refused to let the forensic team take it. Budapest is singed around the edges. When Coulson finally made it out of the hospital four months after the Chitauri Invasion, Clint and Natasha handed him a postcard of New York City seen from the air. There was also one of the Brooklyn Bridge from Steve, the Empire State building from Thor, the New York Hall of Science from Bruce, and one of Stark Tower (of course) from Tony. 

_DISCLAIMER: The knife fight in Jakarta is a reference to Chuck; the sub-title and Dr Oatman’s name come from Grosse Pointe Blank._


End file.
